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GOP leaders finally meet Obama

(From left) Mitch McConnell, Barack Obama and John Boehner will all be at the summit. | AP photos
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On Monday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs acknowledged that the bipartisan meeting, once touted as a pivotal negotiating session, was now a predicate for more substantive sessions in the future and, more generally, goodwill.

“This is the beginning of a new relationship with leaders in the House and the Senate,” Gibbs told reporters. “I think this is the beginning of a longer-term conversation. I do not expect that we’ll come out, after an hour or an hour and a half, and have full agreement on this. I think — I hope — there’s agreement on the notion of how important it is to get this done by the end of the year.”

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Obama, who had only limited contact with GOP leaders during the first two years of his presidency, has quietly tried to soothe frayed feelings among Republicans, after spending much of the fall hammering and even mocking their leadership.

On Nov. 17, Obama quietly dispatched legislative liaison Dan Turton to hand-deliver Boehner a note celebrating his 61st birthday — and the president himself quickly followed up with a friendly telephone call, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

But he hasn’t had a serious policy talk with Boehner and McConnell about the mountain of issues dividing the parties since the GOP recaptured the House nearly a month ago. Moreover, he’s eschewed the kind of back-channel communication with his Hill opponents favored by other presidents.

Both relationships need some repairing. McConnell — who hasn’t had a serious face-to-face discussion with Obama since August — has already vowed that his top goal for the next two years is to make Obama “a one-term president.”Boehner, for his part, has vowed to repeal the Democratic health care reform plan, slash government spending and enact a permanent extension of the Bush-era tax cuts, despite the multitrillion-dollar price tag.

Republican congressional aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they remain skeptical of the president’s outreach effort and wonder why Obama favors highly publicized summit-style meetings and not the more private chats favored by other presidents.
When a reporter asked Gibbs why the White House was negotiating in the “spotlight,” as opposed to in a lower-key venue, he shot back: “We’re looking at this as a working meeting. We’re looking at this as a — and always have — as a way to begin a conversation on the priorities that are important not for one political party but for the American people. I’ll leave the spotlights to you guys.”

Even if Obama succeeds in overcoming GOP suspicion, he will have a tough time working through a series of complex issues that will involve deal cutting with members of his own party in addition to Hill Republicans.

Nothing is more complex — and fraught with more potential trouble for both sides — than extending the Bush tax cuts, which are due to expire Jan. 1.

Pelosi has made it clear she wants to pass a tax cut extension only for families earning $250,000 or less. But it is not certain whether Obama is willing to stand with her.

Readers' Comments (379)

“This was a pretty obvious missed opportunity,” said a GOP leadership aide. “If you’re going to embrace a proposal that Republicans have made in the past, why not say so? Why try to hog all the credit? Communication is like bacon — it makes everything better. But this was just ham-fisted.”

Maybe he'll do that when they admit that his healthcare plan was pretty much the '93 GOP plan/Romneycare and not the fever dream that they shamelessly tried to smear it as.

Obama, who had only limited contact with GOP leaders during the first two years of his presidency, has quietly tried to soothe frayed feelings among Republicans, after spending much of the fall hammering and even mocking their leadership.

Obama's leadership style is to mock, blame, spend-islate, then when that fails as all of it did, he retreats to freezing gov't salaries and giving no credit publicly to the republicans. What's new? This POTUS thinks spending is legislation, and that's it. No spending agenda from the GOP means this President doesn't know how to function but one things for certain, the Dems can't bench Pelosi and she'll be in every meeting pushing her historic HCR Bill which Republicans will just repeal and defund anyway. It's obvious Obama has been shut down by the mid term losses, and will be ineffective for the next year, then probaby will pull a LBJ and not run again. (For the good of the country as Obama's resume is leadership lite)

Obama's idea of bipartainship is one meeting with Mitch McConnell in two years. If I was a Republican leader I would be extremely cautious of Obama and his entourage. They have no desire for working together and the media allows them to behave like that!

Obama's idea of bipartainship is one meeting with Mitch McConnell in two years. If I was a Republican leader I would be extremely cautious of Obama and his entourage. They have no desire for working together and the media allows them to behave like that!

Yes, and the GOP has been ever so intellectually honest. They've reached across the aisle and tried really hard to work with him and in no way did they make it their goal to obstruct everything he tried to do before he was even inaugurated, as McConnell stated.

Obama's idea of bipartainship is one meeting with Mitch McConnell in two years. If I was a Republican leader I would be extremely cautious of Obama and his entourage. They have no desire for working together and the media allows them to behave like that!

Please, do I need to sarcastically state how the GOP reached across the aisle? Oh wait I just did that.

"Both relationships need some repairing. McConnell — who hasn’t had a serious face-to-face discussion with Obama since August — has already vowed that his top goal for the next two years is to make Obama “a one-term president.”Boehner, for his part, has vowed to repeal the Democratic health care reform plan, slash government spending and enact a permanent extension of the Bush-era tax cuts, despite the multitrillion-dollar price tag."

Pretty obvious there's no compormising with these clowns. I don't get why Dems think the Republicans will ever compromise or give Dems credit for anything. They're playing politics because they can't stand Obama, for any given reason, and want to see him fail. Maybe they don't want to swallow the blame for everything falling apart as was the narrative in 2008, or maybe it's something else, but when shutting down congress is their only answer so that nothing good can come out of a Dem's presidency I can't fanthom the type of people who respect the GOP establishment.

The onus should be on the President of the United States to meet with the GOP. After all, the mid term elections were a vote of no confidence by the American People on the President, his party and his policies.

It is the President who should meet with the GOP, hat in hand, and not the other way around.

Yes, you are right. Obama's confusion with spending as legislation gets so scrambled up it comes out as "spend-islate" policy. Spending a trillion dollars as he did in the Stimulous Bill which resulted in 9.5% unemployment for a solid 18 months is an amazing FAILURE.

Imagine if Obama was cut off from spending taxpayer dollars and had to govern or cut back government? He would have a teleprompter marathon to get some attention to his plight.

When the had the majority the Democrats didn't need to reach across the aisle. Now that they got their asses kicked they have to sit down with their Republican colleagues. The left is increasingly isolated within the Democratic party and Obama will more than likely tell Pelosi and her ilk to take a hike. There is nothing to be gained for him to work with a faction of the party that has not only destroyed the Democratic brand but is too stupid to understand they were the cause of it.

So can you explain to me why the Republicans shou;ld "compromise" on anything? The democrats certainly weren't willing to when they muddled up the last 2 years. Now that they've had their lunch handed to them they think WE should be willing to compromise?

The American conservatives cetainly aren't following the lead of Cameron and the English conservatives; our Republicans still want to grow our national debt and budget deficit with outrageously expensive tax cuts for our wealthiest Americans (averaging $7 million a year) that the CBO claims is the worst way to spend that money if stimulating the economy and growing jobs is the goal.

If Republicans are willing to play cynical politics with our national security (START Treaty) and fight for deficit-exploding tax cuts for the richest of rich, they have totally missed the message of the voters, who turned to them only because voters are desperate to see action and bipartisan work to achieve jobs and economic growth while holding down spending and reducing our deficit.

President Obama should remain quiet, and let these Republican PUNKS hang themselves by putting themselves ON THE RECORD. Then, the Democrats should be unified on not doing ANY legislation that adds to the deficit...stealing one of the big Republican talking points. Perfect opportunity to show that the Repukes are full of it.